In my first week at university, my tutor asked her students to pick the name of an artist from a hat. If we’d heard of them, we had to return the slip of paper and pick another name. Then we had to research them and give a short talk about their work a few weeks later. I picked the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz. What little I could find about her ambitious, richly coloured, technically complex textile sculptures and environments beguiled me. It was clear she was a brilliant, hugely distinctive figure. I couldn’t wait to see her work in the flesh.
But that was exactly 30 years ago. And this is the first UK survey of her work since, albeit one focusing mostly on her first two decades; it’s the first at a public space in London for nearly 50 years.
